what led to your hearing loss diagnosis?
[doctors] discovered my hearing loss when i was about four years old.
they don’t really know for sure [what caused it], but i think they thought that i was maybe born with an ear infection that wasn’t detected.
what was it like to grow up with hearing loss?
it was very difficult. it was very frustrating trying to communicate with my family and with people around me — they had to constantly repeat themselves. it makes you feel unhappy about yourself because people look at you differently when you have hearing loss.
even when i went to school, i struggled. there were a lot of frustrations and misunderstandings — [my teachers] had to repeat themselves. they would get mad because i couldn’t understand them. i felt unhappy all the time. i had no confidence in myself. i constantly got teased. i didn’t have many friends, just because to them [i was] different. i just thought that if i want to make friends, i would have to not worry about what people think. whether or not you wanted to be my friend, that was fine. i did have some friends who stuck up for me — that was important.
were there tools to help you communicate at school?
they had a phonic ear, which is a special hearing aid. the teacher wears a microphone [and the sound is transmitted to a receiver worn by the student]. that really helped a lot. not all schools had that, so i had to go to a special school. [if the teacher didn’t have a phonic ear], i couldn’t understand what they were saying. i had to really rely on lip reading. it was very, very hard.